A news blog to collect ideas from around the world - of where small changes have been made to the public & third sector services that have resulted in big benefits. I am looking for ‘bite sized’ ideas that have helped your organisation deliver more to your local communities, or helped make work even more efficient, or just saved some money or staff/officer time. And the idea could be applied elsewhere reasonably easily. All creativity & innovation welcome!
Thanks

29 April 2015

The source of ideas

I have stopped researching and servicing this blog so actively now but it still contains hundreds of ideas about how to do more with less in the public services. These are all searchable and browsable below.

Also: if you come across a particularly good (new) example, please let me know and I will upload it to these pages. My email address is jon@jonharveyassociates.co.uk

And please remember:within in every organisation is a wealth of talent, innovation and ingenuity! Hire consultants (if you wish to) for their ability to help you and your colleagues uncover this talent, innovation and ingenuity - not because you want to import theirs!

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Contacting Jon

Blog owner

Buckingham Town Mayor 2017/2018 and local Town Councillor working with and for local people to make the town even healthier, safer and wealthier for everyone who lives, works, visits, studies and plays in Buckingham
Change facilitator and organisational development practitioner with 28+ years experience across the public services and commercial world.
And now a blogger and author too (Cracking Questions)

Why this blog...?

Readers may wonder why I created this blog. I hope I have made it clear what this blog is the description above and in the first post - but perhaps not the why...

I guess it is because I am generally fed up with the focus on big initiatives and massive reengineering projects and whole scale restructuring as being the answers to better results. Instead I take the view that within almost all organisations are people with ideas for improvement urgently wanting to be heard. But it seems that these organisations would rather hire expensive consultants / programme managers / high flying executives to come in and do improvement to the organisation. The implicit beliefs underlying this are that we need people from outside (or at the most senior echelon) to have all the big ideas.

However it seems to me that the most important ingredient in success for any organisation - large or small - is motivation. This is not just the motivation to turn up, or indeed the motivation to do good professional job. The kind of motivation I am talking about is the desire to think "how can we do this better?... how can we deliver even more to those we serve?... what do I and my colleagues have to do to achieve even more than yesterday?..." This kind of energy is rare in many organisations. Indeed, many of these organisations do not even know what they are missing.

If organisations focus on bringing in outside "experts" - I think this kind of ordinary but rare motivation is neutralised (or at the very least it is not nurtured). At the worst - people are turned off and will maybe even seek to sabotage the organisation or harm it in some way.

I know I am not alone in thinking this - but I and my fellow activists against the "bring in the expensive experts" approach to organisational development are sometimes marginalised. Perhaps this is because many senior people do not allow themselves to really believe in the boundless creative energy of more junior people - despite the oft favoured words of "our people are a greatest asset". Large consultancies, naturally, collude with this view and happily (and expensively) introduce cumbersome systems of performance management, target setting and human resource management strategies (etc.) which weigh down the organisations and squeeze out creativity.

I declare that I have a profoundly optimistic view of people. I believe most people, given the right conditions, default to being creative, clever, enthusiastic and committed. But given the wrong conditions, all of us can become cynical, de-motivated, dull and tedious.

And so this is why I wanted to create this blog. I wanted a blog that would celebrate the small ideas - the small ideas (that can easily become the big ideas with great results too) that come from the ordinary people in organisations - the people whose voices and ideas deserve and demand to be heard. I want this blog to be part of the effort to help make this happen - because I believe it is good for business, good for people and good for the world.

Crucialy, I am interested in what leaders in these organisations (where these ideas bubble forth like a mountain brook), are doing to create the right context. This for me is critical. Simply exhorting organisations to do more to unleash the small ideas with big results is not enough. I want to hear about and publish here what leaders are doing to make this happen. In this way I hope that other leaders will learn and add to their own practice.

My ultimate aim for this blog is that it will become a self regenerating hub, humming with the small and creative ideas from all over the world that are making the world a healthier, wealthier, happier and sustainable place for us and for future generations. Please contribute & please circulate. Thank you